4th Match with Jeremy

4/8/09  Wednesday  11:30 A.M.

Chico Racquet Club

Score: 1-6, 1-6

 

I’m trying to figure out why this match score came out so badly for me.  I wasn’t playing that badly.  It was rather windy.  It was a wind from the south that was gusty and did in fact move the ball around.  That did seem to make it hard to hit with any pace against the wind.  Of course with the wind it should have been the opposite.  I don’t know if I took advantage of that.

 

I was serving fairly well today.  Jeremy didn’t hit any outright winners on his return of my serve.  I got a good number of first serves in.  I believe I only double faulted once or twice at most.

 

I was hitting my ground strokes quite well also.  My main problem was that from time to time I stood up on my shots.  I didn’t stay down low, keeping my knees flexed throughout the stroke.  These shots usually went into the net.

 

I think where I went wrong was I ended up hitting too many short balls which allowed Jeremy to come forward up to the net to finish.  Some of this happened on my return of Jeremy’s serve.  I had trouble returning his serve today away from him.  Most of my returns were high and into the center of the court.  This put me on the defensive.  That may account for half of the games I lost.  I believe Jeremy held his serve throughout the two sets.

 

I did move forward when I had a chance today.  I tried to bring Jeremy up to the net with short balls on occasion but wasn’t that successful with it.  Other times I tried to lob over Jeremy when he came up on my short balls. Because of the wind my lobs fell short with the exception of one which was a nice forehand topspin lob.

 

We did have a number of deuce games.  How many?  Five or six possibly.  That’s almost half of the games we played and must mean I wasn’t playing that badly.  I would also mention that we had some very good points that went 5, 6 or more balls.

 

My unforced errors must have been a factor, too, but I’m not sure that that was the difference today.

 

The biggest difference I can think of in losing today was my return of serve.  It just wasn’t strong enough.  I wasn’t able to place my returns nor hit my returns with very good pace.  Jeremy’s serve is basically a lot of spin, but it moves a lot while it rises.  I do think returning his serve in the wind made it a little more difficult, but I’m not sure how much more difficult.

 

In general I think I played fairly well in trying to set up points.  I was pleased with the way I was moving forward in the court when I could.  I felt like I was making the court shorter for Jeremy with my presence inside the baseline, especially when the wind was behind me.  I hit to his backhand deep a number of times and moved forward.  I finished some short balls nicely.  I focused on not getting my racquet too far back in my stroke when I was hitting from inside the baseline.  That was working nicely.

 

I enjoyed playing today.  I felt fairly loose.  I especially enjoyed serving.  I hit some nice 1^st serves even with the wind being a factor on the toss.  A couple of times I had to chase it, but I still got them in and they ended up being very good serves.

 

Anyways, too bad the score was so lopsided!